Lonely Train
by rainwater tears
Summary: postseries.  There is a blur of blues and tans outside her window that leaves a faint suggestion of a coastal landscape.  Lit.


This fic has been something like 2 years in the making. Not continuously, but…I started it summer 2005. On a train, no less. Anyway, I wasn't so sure about it when I (finally) finished it, but Ari always makes me feel better about whatever I've written, so this is for her.

**Lonely Train**  
By Rainwater Tears

There is a blur of blues and tans outside her window that leaves a faint suggestion of a coastal landscape. She prefers not to look outside, though.

Inside it is cool. She nestles comfortably into the deep red seat and rests her forehead against the window. Her breath puffs against the glass and she idly draws a heart in the small white cloud that appears.

A muffled voice comes over the intercom announcing some station stop or another. She can't make out the words any more than the frantic teenage boy sitting across the aisle can: "Did he say Otto? Is this Otto? God! It's 2008, buy a new sound system!" The difference is, she doesn't care.

There is a book sitting, unopened, in her lap. She had wanted a distraction, words to bury herself in for a few hours, but when she'd sat down she had no desire to read.

She doesn't look up when he sits down beside her. She acknowledges him with a small nod and keeps her eyes focused on her hands, now resting calmly on top of the book.

The routine is old. All these summers in Cape Cod with his family (a family that doesn't like her, no matter what they may tell him) have blurred into one, and all she can remember from any of them is—

The time she spilled a soda down her dress. It was just a garden party, but Shira threw a fit when they got home (at the time it had been all frustrated giggles and arms in the air and sly references to her lack of social grace). It was "the end of the world." It was "absolutely atrocious."

The time she forgot to pack sunscreen and turned bright red. They hardly allowed her out of the house until her natural coloring returned.

The time they thought she was pregnant. ("Her mother's daughter," Mitchum muttered at dinner.)

Logan doesn't see it. When he's around his parents are polite. They smile at her, ask her how work is, how her grandfather is doing. They pull her into friendly hugs and whisper their sharp commentary into her ear while Logan stands at her side.

She thinks it's almost worse than when they hated her outright.

She twists the ring in a circle around her left finger. The diamond is large, sharp. She's only had it a week, but it has cut through the skin on her middle finger, and her pinky is raw from the friction.

"We don't have to tell them this weekend," she says, still not looking him in the eye. The diamond is no longer visible. She's tucked it around to the inside of her hand, imagining the way a wedding band will look across her finger.

He doesn't respond and she isn't sure he's heard her. She can see the corner of his laptop on his knees and he reaches an arm across her to plug it in. She finally glances up. His ear buds are in and his iPod is on and he's not paying the slightest bit of attention to her.

The train lurches to a stop. She watches his laptop slide forward, sees his hands reach out to pull it back into place.

Outside the window the platform is buzzing. There are people everywhere, businessmen mostly, a few stray teenagers. Children of divorce with their duffle bags and magazines.

Summer is just a few days away and she can see it in the way they're all dressed. Teenage girls with soft cotton skirts and thin tank tops, men without ties. She presses her hand to the glass and it feels cold. There are too many layers between her and the warmth they promise.

A woman gets on with a small child and she can feel Logan tense beside her. Hear his unspoken groan. She unplugs the laptop for him. "I'll be in the snack car, meet you in the usual place," he tells her, as if she needs the vocal affirmation. It's not like he hasn't done this before.

She briefly entertains the fantasy that he's having an affair with the snack car lady. It would explain the recent weight gain. She likes the idea of him having an affair. It's tawdry, raw, almost romantic. It's an excuse.

The train stops again.

She nestles the armrest back into the space between the seats and tries to get comfortable. She wishes she'd worn jeans. Her skirt is pencil straight, restricting. It cuts her to angles. Shira hates jeans.

The car is starting to fill up. A man slides into the seat beside her just as the train leaves the station. He smells like leather and stale cigarettes.

Her forehead is against the window again. She twists the ring. She gazes outside and tries to separate the trees but they're going too fast. Everything is color and nothing has a shape.

Beside her the man shifts, pulls something from his back pocket. He yanks down the armrest between them and leans on it. She can see now that it's a book in his hand and she tries to make out the cover in the reflection on the glass, but all she can see is her own face. Wide eyes with too much liner, lips a shade too dark. The image makes her sick (or maybe that's the speed, the landscape) and she looks away, tries to focus on something steady, blank.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, when she catches the stranger's face.

Jess looks her in the eye and she thinks she sees a hint of a smile there. "I was wondering how long it would take you to notice me." He leans back, looks her over. She can feel his eyes linger on her shoulders, her narrow frame.

"What are you doing here?" she repeats. She tastes anger at the back of her throat, tries to hold it back. How dare he remind her of things she can't fix?

He doesn't answer her. His gaze is penetrating; she follows his eyes down, down, to her slender fingers as they rest atop the book. "Engaged?" he asks. His voice is even, light. She nods.

He looks the same. Lean, but more muscular than he once was. He looks healthy. She resists the urge to reach out and run her fingers through his hair. It's shorter than it used to be.

"You look good," she tells him. She hopes she sounds sincere. It's not that she doesn't mean it, it's just self-resentment piling up in her stomach. It's like acid, the way it eats at her words.

He nods but doesn't return the compliment. She knows he's thinking about the girl she used to be. All curves and gloss and innocence.

"What're you reading?" she asks, choosing to focus on the book in his hand. It isn't very thick. She curls her fingers around the edge of her own.

"Tobias Wolff." He offers it out and she reaches for the tattered cover. Her hand closes around the binding, it slips a little in her sweaty palm. She avoids his fingers, but the book acts as a conduit (words, paper, rhythm, rhyme). This is chemistry.

His notes bleed through the margins and she traces their path. "Any good?" she asks, but she already knows the answer. She flips through the pages.

"The protagonist has a lot to say about crazy authors…and writing," he tells her as he takes the book back. "You'd like it."

She nods.

"He talks about a few decent writers, too." He cracks a grin and she bites her lip. She thinks this is the first time he's ever carried a conversation. "What about you?"

He slides the book off her lap. It's intimate and natural, the way he touches her. He's not afraid.

"The Patron Saint of Liars," he reads from the cover. "You like it?"

She nods again, watches the way his fingers peel the cover back. The book is thick in his hands.

"So who's the guy?" he asks, his eyes still on the page before him, as if he doesn't care. She wonders briefly whether he does.

"Logan," she says. She tastes pride. It's metallic (like a trophy), sharp (like her ring), and she gags on it.

He nods, still not looking up from the book. She watches him blink slowly, turn the page. His fingers are calloused, worn. "When's the wedding?"

The question is friendly, and it throws her. "We haven't set a date yet," she tells him.

"Ah. Big wedding or small?"

"I don't know." She shrugs. "Big, probably." There are things she doesn't say.

"Ah." He nods again, still looking at the book. "So are you guys going to have kids, or what?"

She chokes on her tongue, feels her nausea return. "That's an awfully personal question," she says. Her teeth taste like outrage, her lips are lies. _"I know you, Rory,"_ she hears in her heart. This time when he nods it's knowing. She sinks her teeth into the soft flesh on the inside of her cheek. Bites back her anger.

"Haven't talked about it, huh?"

She closes her eyes, leans back against the window. Shuts him out.

The train stops again and she's thrown forward against the seat in front of her. She puts a hand up to stop herself, but he catches her before she hits it. His hands are warm against her arms. She can feel his breath on her cheek.

"So how'd he ask?"

This she can do. She takes a deep breath, runs a shaky hand through her hair. "He took me to Paris," she tells him. "Got down on one knee in front of hundreds of tourists at the top of the Eiffel Tower." She neglects to mention the way it felt when the blood rushed to her cheeks. The embarrassment mixed with too much champagne. "It was very romantic." Or it would have been, if it hadn't rained.

"When?"

"Last week." She presses her lips into a proud smile that doesn't reach her eyes.

He hands the book back to her and slouches down a bit in his seat. "I hate trains," he confesses. "They move too fast. Makes me nauseous." She feels it as he glances at her, despite her downcast eyes. "Besides, they always have the air conditioning turned up too high."

She smiles just a bit, an honest, sad smile, just enough for him to see the glint of sharp white teeth against her dark red lipstick, and nods. "It's not even summer yet. Not for another few days, anyway." A strand of hair falls across her eye and she brushes it back.

"Where are you headed?" she asks.

He sighs and wipes a the palm of his hand across his eye. "Boston. I'm supposed to read at some sort of living writers conference. It's all bull, really, but they offered to pay, so I said I'd go."

"I read your last book," she tells him. "It was great. Each one is a little better than the one that came before it." The topic comes easily to her. She swipes her tongue across her upper lip and continues. "You've got this amazing sense of exaggerated reality. I feel like I really know the characters."

He laughs. "You do. Half of them I practically ripped from Stars Hollow."

"Well, I didn't want to say anything." She grins at him and finally meets his eyes. "You do an amazing job with them, though," she tells him. "When you write them they aren't just caricatures." A strand of carefully placed hair falls across her eyes. "You maintain their humanity."

"Thank you," he says. "That means a lot."

She smiles and bites her lip. Her teeth scrape at her lipstick. "I must look like a mess," she says as she tucks her hair back behind her ears. "I hate this. I don't know what it is about sitting in a chair for hours on end that wreaks havoc on my hair and make-up, but I usually look like I've been through a tornado by the time I got off the train."

He shakes his head. "You look fine," he tells her, and she can feel his eyes on her lip where her lipstick is wearing off. "You never told me where _you_ were going."

"Cape Cod by way of Boston," she says. "We're meeting Logan's family for the weekend."

"We?" he asks.

"Logan and I."

He nods. "So…why are you alone?"

"Logan's in the snack car," she tells him. "He works better there." She thinks maybe that's the problem. She bites her lip again. She can taste the lipstick as it comes off against her teeth.

"Right. So you're getting off in Boston?"

"Yes. We're meeting Logan's parents at the station and driving to the cape in the morning."

"Sounds like fun," he says, but she knows he could hear the hatred rising in her throat.

"Big fun," she mutters. Her skirt is so tight around her knees that she can feel it cutting off her circulation and the air conditioning is blowing directly on her bare shoulders. The bathroom is just down the aisle and she can already feel the denim against her legs. "I'll be right back."

She grabs her duffle from under the seat and squeezes past him. His knees brush against the back of her legs and she shivers. She lets out a deep sigh once she's safely down the aisle and in the bathroom. A quick glance in the rusted mirror tells her he was just being kind when he told her she looked alright. Her make-up has worn off in patches and the harsh air conditioning has left her hair a tangled mess.

The paper towels are thin and rough, but she dampens them and wipes off her make-up. A quick fight with the hairbrush later she's got a ponytail and it only takes her seconds to yank on a pair of jeans and her favorite old Yale sweatshirt. This time she smiles at her reflection. She hasn't felt this comfortable in months.

The train jolts to a stop again and she has to grab onto the sink to keep from falling. She can't hear the station stop through the thick walls of the bathroom, just the shuffle of feet and voices. She slings the strap of her duffle bag over her shoulder and slides the bathroom door open. The car is nearly empty as people make their way out to the platform and a sign outside the window reads "Boston – North Station."

She mutters obscenities as she races down the aisle to where she'd been sitting. Other than the worn copy of Old School that he's left in her seat there is no sign he was ever there.

Out on the platform she searches for him in the crowd. People are rushing in every direction, teenagers, businessmen and women, mothers and fathers and small children. She clutches the book to her chest and tries to remember what he was wearing.

She trips over her own toes as she races down the platform and the book flies from her hands. A slip of paper slides from its pages and flutters to the ground beside her fingers. There's an address scribbled across it in his determined hand. "Meet me tonight…seven o'clock?" she reads.

She meets Logan at the top of the escalator. He's holding out a paper cup of watered down coffee. When she reaches for it the diamond digs its way into her middle finger and the blood that builds up around it makes the stone look like a ruby. The pain hits her a second later and she drops the cup, watches as the coffee flies up into the air in graceful arcs of murky brown liquid. She understands how this has to go as it lands across her knee, her thigh, the hem of her jeans.

"I can't marry you, Logan," she says. She's wiping away the blood, now, pulling the ring from the raw skin of her finger. "I'm too young to get married and your family doesn't like me, and frankly, you're just not the one."

He's gaping at her, not speaking, like he doesn't understand what the words mean.

"Anyway, I'm just going to go. You have a nice vacation."

The denim is sticking to her skin as she turns on her heel and walks away from him, slowly. The book is still clutched under her arm, and she pulls it out to look at it more closely. Around her, her fellow travelers are scurrying this way and that, chasing trains and companions. Her hand is still bleeding, still hurting, and the reality of this situation has yet to sink in, but for the moment her shoulders sit straight and light and relief blossoms in her chest with the summer.


End file.
